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$Unique_ID{bob01147}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps 1945, The
Chapter X: The Survivors - Part III}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Various}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{jews
world
survivors
how
auschwitz
holocaust
children
israel
liberation
day}
$Date{1987}
$Log{}
Title:       Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps 1945, The
Author:      Various
Date:        1987

Chapter X: The Survivors - Part III

Kalman Sultanik

     May 12, early in the morning, 1942.  A beautiful day, and I had slept in
quietness.  The ghetto was surrounded, and we were asked to get together all
belongings in 10 minutes.  My two brothers were already in the labor camp in
Plaszow.  My mother, father, two children, and myself gathered with the rest
of the ghetto of the Jewish community.

     We were taken to the station where we were separated --children, women,
and the old on one side; young men, able to work, on the other side.

     The Germans behaved this day, contrary to the previous days where no day
had gone by without a shooting, a killing.  Nevertheless, they gave away their
behavior.  They told my father, who was on the border between being old or
being able to go to work, to go on the right side with the young and able.  My
father refused.  He said, "I cannot leave my wife and my two daughters."

     He pushed me to the other side.  He knew he was going to death because
before going out, we divided our valuable things.  He took the valuable things
from my mother and two sisters and gave them to me with the hope that I,
together with my younger brothers, would survive.  He told me I had to take
care of them in the labor camp to be able to survive.

     A few days later, after I was already in Plaszow, I decided to go back to
Miechow.  I could leave the camp because I was connected with a Zionist youth
group which took me out of the camp.  On my initiative, we decided to send
someone to follow the train and find out where it was going.

     In a few days, a Gentile woman whom we hired came back and told us the
train had gone to Belzec and that there was no sign of life.  I communicated
this message, which brings me to a bitter conclusion.  If we could find out
under these circumstances what happened to the trains, how could the Allies,
the democratic world, not have known?  This has been very disappointing to me.

     After I was freed by the Russian army on May 10 and on the march from
Dresden to Theresienstadt, my first thought was to go back to Miechow, my home
town.  As I approached Miechow, which seemed like a ghost town, the first news
I received was that my uncle had been killed by some Polish pro-Nazi
hooligans.  My mind went blank and I could not comprehend this tragedy.

     Although warned by several people that my uncle's fate could befall me as
well, I decided to approach the Russian officers stationed in Miechow and ask
for protection, since I wanted to stay on in Miechow for a few more days to
see if anyone from my family might still return.  The captain in charge
happened to be Jewish from Minsk.  He told me his story - how his family had
been killed when the Nazis had invaded his town, and we both cried.

     After the trauma of World War II, we Holocaust survivors could not help
but accuse the forces not directly involved in the Holocaust.  Why could those
forces not have foreseen the horrendous proportion the Holocaust was fated to
take on?  We were deeply perplexed, and we remain perplexed.

     I was doing some research on this period, and I found out that there was
only one Jewish organization that attempted to save the death marchers. In
Geneva, in the beginning of 1945, Gerhardt Riegner of the World Jewish
Congress appealed to the Red Cross to save the people from the marches - not
only Jews but Gypsies and anyone who was on the marches.  However, it was to
no avail.

     Yet, the extermination of six million Jews took place in the heart of
Christian Europe, in the citadel of western culture and learning. Churchgoing
Christians, devotees of literature, art, and philosophy, participated in these
crimes, apparently with good conscience.  The crisis that had begun with the
Jews required a coalition of major powers and tens of millions of non-Jewish
victims to defeat the Nazi regime.

     After World War II, we survivors had a right to believe we would have a
world in which the unparalleled atrocities of the Holocaust could never again
be repeated.  I was convinced that the Jews - the number one victims of Nazism
and mankind in general would never again be subjected to the suffering
undergone during World War II and that anti-Semitism would never dare rise
again.

     Only 27 years after the establishment of the State of Israel, which arose
from the ashes of the six million Jews, the United Nations Assembly - the very
body which had made the existence of Israel possible adopted a resolution
condemning Zionism as a form of racism.  This is anti-Semitism.

     The rest of the world which was concerned with West Germany's economic
recovery after the war has done little or nothing to encourage that country to
enlighten German youth on the Nazi crimes committed during the Holocaust and
to consider what must be done to avoid another catastrophe.

     Over the centuries, Jews have been confronted with the forces of evil and
of benevolence.  The forces of evil have often prevailed.  The survivors'
disappointment, after their liberation, in the attitude of the world - not
losing the sense of historical proportion - can be compared with the situation
of the Jews in the latter part of the 19th century when, in 1866, Bismarck
brought about the last phase in obtaining equal status for Jews which had
begun with the French Revolution.-1 But, 10 to 15 years later, the forces of
evil reappeared.  Politicians, writers, and intellectuals once again began to
heed fanatics.  A whole movement was created to oppose the Jews.  After a
15-year hiatus, this movement came as a great shock; it frightened the
enlightened 19th century community, and the Jews more than ever before.

     While Jews were in the ghettos, voices had been raised against the
religious minorities that did not have equal status.  But now, at the end of
the 19th century, a movement came out against citizens with equal rights,
maintaining that Jews were not worthy of equality.

     It was not so simple to turn the clock back.  New slogans had to be found
to undermine the Jews.  The reemergence of the modern term "anti-Semitism"
and not "anti-Jewishness" indicated that it was not Judaism nor the Jewish
religion that worked against the Jews.  Instead, their behavior and their
personality traits were stereotyped.  This was a movement that began in
Germany at the end of the 1870's, found disciples in other European countries
for a different reason, and with the chain of events that followed, brought
Hitler to power.

     Neo-Nazi groups at the present time neither enjoy large-scale public
support nor do they pose a direct threat to the established democratic order
in western Europe or in the United States.  It is still too early to predict
the effects of terrorists on democracy in Germany, Italy, France, and Belgium
where the most recent outbreaks have just occurred.

     In conclusion, my dear friends, it is bitter to have to say this, but
pro-Jewish voices raised on behalf of the Jews are no more than voices crying
out in the wilderness.  Precious as those voices are, the world as a whole -
even after the extermination of the six million Jews - remains a wilderness
for the Jews - a silent wilderness.

     In my opinion, this is a problem we must address ourselves to.

Siggi Wilzig

     I had thought that I would be the only angry man, but I found a companion
in addition to companionships.  This gathering has had an extraordinary effect
on me.  I don't believe it was a coincidence that Mr. van Velsen is sitting
next to me because of our alphabet or that I was chosen to be the host for the
Dutch delegation.  It wasn't a coincidence; it was one of those acts that just
happened, just as some of us survived and some didn't.

     When I was asked to talk about the liberation, I told you I couldn't do
that.  That would be an injustice to the six million Jews, particularly my
generation - the children, the million children, under 15, since I was 14 and
an injustice to the Christians, the noble Gentiles, who suffered with us and
died with us.

     I didn't know where God was when I was in Auschwitz at the age of 16.
While in my religion we do not have a son of God, I believe he had his angels
in the form of our friend sitting next to me.  There is a special place in
heaven for people like you, sir.

     We all have the same story - the facts.  Who really knows what happened
on the day of liberation?  Who of us had the strength at 70 and 80 pounds to
know?

     I started out saying that I'm angry.  I have been angry since I was 12
years old.  It's one thing to talk about it in a lecture at West Point and
Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania, and for Elie Wiesel, at
Boston University.  It is one thing to hear yourself and try to avoid the
emotions when it touches your heart, but it brings tears to your eyes.  You
zig-zag and talk about personalities until you get back your composure and you
go on talking.  But liberation didn't come easy, and we paid a high price.

     How does it feel for someone whose family - a German-Jewish orthodox
family lived and died for the country, whose uncles volunteered at the ages of
18 and 19 for the First World War?  How does it feel for someone to remember
the day after Hitler was appointed.  How does it feel to go through Auschwitz
and lose 59 of your relatives?  How does it feel to remember whether there
were 18 or 19 selections - half of them before Mengele?  How does it feel to
remember the pinching of your cheeks and the sticking out of your stomach that
was blown up from the rotten soup we ate?

     How do you want to remember being in Block 9 and being with a young man
who saw his mother by coincidence being brought into Block 10, the
experimental block?

     He looked out in the month of April in 1943, and he saw less and less of
his mother's face until it vanished.  Who knows that it wasn't just the SS?
I, having been born in Germany, saw the emblems of the German Luftwaffe [air
force].  Yes, the doctors of the army and the Luftwaffe came to the block. How
do you tell a young man of 15, that the mother was transferred, we saw it,
when indeed she was carried out as a corpse to the crematorium?

     So why talk about the liberation?  Who talks about the fact that 11 days
before the liberation two of my brothers were murdered in cold blood?  Eleven
days before.

     Who talks about the seven-year-old nephew, he wasn't dark-haired or
Jewish looking, no, blond and blue-eyed.  And if Hitler would be alive today,
he would die 16 times over seeing that maybe a third of Israel's children are
indeed blond and blue-eyed.

     I was angry at 12 because half of my family was already in concentration
camps.

     Shortly after the conference in Evian where 37 nations gathered and one
by one got up and said they couldn't take in the handful of Jews, everyone had
excuses.  One country even got up to say that it would be bad for us if they
took us in.  It would bring out anti-Semitism.  That is all recorded.  The
seven Gestapo agents in the back in civilian clothes couldn't control their
laughter.

     Without diminishing the crime of the Nazis, let us not forget that the
western world stood idly by.  They said business is business.  Sure, they were
fooled in 1935 and 1936 during the Olympics, but they knew quite well what was
going on.

     Let's talk about the nuns and the priests who died with us.  But the Holy
Father, Pope Pius, kept quiet and said he prayed.  He prayed while my nephew
at seven and my niece at two went to the gas chambers, and not a single word,
not a single broadcast, came out.

     I live in Auschwitz every day today.  I am not liberated yet.  I am
fortunate to have a family, and it is possibly helpful that I'm married to an
American-born woman.  My children live it; how can I have forgotten it?

     The liberation that we hoped would be the end is not the end at all.  My
nightmares that went away for years came back.  They came back when the books
were published that the Holocaust never happened.  That indeed is the cruelest
crime for the last few years.

     Hitler didn't start just with the Jews.  You know how he ended up. So,
therefore, our Christian colleagues should remember.  When 90 books are
published in 16 languages telling us that the Holocaust didn't exist and that
my number on the arm doesn't exist and that my parents and brothers and
sisters and 59 relatives didn't die, I have to continue living in Auschwitz
every day.

     A funeral reminds me of Auschwitz.  When there's too much food, I'm
reminded of Auschwitz because there was none.  When there was too little food,
it reminds me.  Yesterday at lunchtime I wanted to take the sherbet and move
it over to my colleague to give him a second portion.  I told him so.  That
was a natural way of looking at it.

     In closing: A conspiracy has taken place, but nobody talks about it.  You
wouldn't have had an Auschwitz if there had been an Israel.  You had Auschwitz
because there was no Israel.  The western world, their conscience bothered,
gave us Israel as we deserved.  How do you destroy Israel? - for the sake of
oil and the PLO, by denying that there was an Auschwitz, by denying that there
was a Holocaust.

     We had Auschwitz.  We got Israel.  Deny that there was an Auschwitz, and
then you can get rid of Israel.  So, I appeal to you not just to care for
ourselves and for the survivors.  I disagree with those who want me to help
about Cambodia.  Ask for money, and I will help you.

     We need to fight the pests, the disease that old Nazis and new Nazis are
spreading with the help of oil money to destroy the freedom and the existence
of Israel.  If they destroy the truth about the Holocaust, then Israel, God
forbid, is to follow.  That is our duty as survivors.

Eli Zborowski

     When the day of liberation came, I was in a group of 10 Jews hiding in a
chicken coop on a very poor Polish farm.  I had joined this group only in the
last six months before liberation.

     I will not speak of my long journey of living in a ghetto, working in an
underground Zionist youth organization, later a member and liaison for the
United Jewish Resistance Organization, living later on Aryan papers, and
hiding and changing places.  All these experiences of that period belong to
another place to speak of.

     I want to share with you my simple loneliness in the experience of being
liberated and the immediate weeks, months following the events that meant so
much for us, who became known under the word and name, survivors.

     It was on January 17.  We were living in a cellar with no windows in
darkness - 10 Jews.  We were told that a Russian soldier was there on the
premises, and I, having Aryan papers, was allowed to go out from the cellar to
join and speak with the Russian.  They were confused.  We were confused. Could
this be one of the Russian soldiers, the Vlasovivs, who fought on the German
side?

     Our bewilderment had to be kept quiet.  We were liberated where we lived
in enemy territory.  We were not sure if the Russians would retreat and the
Germans would come back, so we decided to remain in the cellar at least that
day.  In the evening it was almost for us an historic decision to get out from
the cellar, to get out from hiding and start walking first towards the East,
just in case the Germans came back.

     We realized that the Soviet armies were moving and crushing the German
armies and that we were safe.  But there was no enthusiasm.  There were no
happy, joyous outcries.  We felt, perhaps, more lost than before we were
liberated.

     It is difficult even to recall that exact feeling.  Our strong will for
life was carried throughout the months of the war, but we suddenly felt all
alone.  We started to walk back to our hometown, where we found ourselves to
be the only Jews that remained from 1,500 families, about 5,000 Jews.

     I want to tell you that the experience that we had in that hometown just
compelled the few of us - the 10 to leave that town and seek refuge in the
bigger cities where there were a few hundred Jewish survivors.  This was the
unfortunate experience at the days of our liberation and immediately following
it.

     There were about 20 children, who were between 14 and 19, and we felt the
need for families.  Those of us who had no parents at all, although some of us
had older brothers reunited in February in the city of Czestochowa. We felt
that we wanted to be together, and by the end of February, we set out on a
march to Warsaw to present our wish to the central committee that had come
from Lublin and settled in Warsaw.

     We wanted to tell them that it was impossible for us to live in the place
where we were raised and that there was no other place for us to go other than
Palestine.  This was how the first kibbutz that was set up after the war in
1945 was begun.  By the end of March, we had a kibbutz and the name was Al
Shem Lochamei Hagetaot, In the Name of the Ghetto Fighters.

     In July 1945, this group of children and four other groups of children
that had formed in Poland, about 160 youngsters altogether, left Poland and
arrived around August 10 in the American zone of occupied Germany.  There we
found to our great surprise at least a few hundred, a few thousand Jews. But
what was more surprising to us was that there were already administrations.
Those who had been in camps yesterday came out the next day and formed
committees ready to help.

     I think that if we survivors can account for the miracle of having
survived, the greatest miracle is that these people, these survivors, have
been able to adjust themselves so fast and so soon to normal life.

     I think that if we survivors have a message to the world of what we have
lived through, what the Germans and their collaborators have inflicted upon
the Jewish people and upon all humanity, we also have a message to carry to
the world of genuine love, love that was shown and displayed during the war
and primarily after the war when we saw the survivors coming back normal
people.

     We the Jews - all the Jews - were assigned by the German laws to be
dehumanized, starved, and liquidated under a technical description, "The Final
Solution."  How proud we can be that the anger from our experiences did not
ultimately cause us to look at the evil but made us willing to share love with
others!

     When we turned to the world to take a lesson from our experiences and
from what the others have done to humanity, we turn to them and ask them to
study the chapter of survivors, the return to normal life and their
adjustments to becoming contributing members of society.

     Of course, we live with our past, but it is controlled by our deeper
sense of human will to live a normal life, a life of love with the message to
the world that we have seen the worst and we will try to show the free world
the finest in mankind.

     Yes, we live.  We have children and they have children.  To those
fortunate ones who didn't experience the Holocaust firsthand, our strongest
message is that we survivors are the examples of humans' natural will to live.

     The lesson should be taken from what humanity was capable of doing to
mankind, but the ultimate lesson is the greatness of humanity - life by
itself.

Yaffa Eliach

     We have just heard the testimonies and the price of freedom.  What did it
indeed mean to be a lone survivor?  What did it mean to discover that we were
the only survivors of large families?

     What did it mean to be a Jewish survivor?  Unlike our friends from the
Netherlands, from France, from Norway, we came back to a country that did not
welcome us.  In many instances, our neighbors wished us dead.

     When I came to my hometown with my mother, father, and brother at the age
of seven, we were welcomed with 15 bullets that killed my brother and nine
bullets that killed my mother.  It was her blood and her dead body that bought
me the price of freedom, and this was after liberation.

     We soon learned that the majority of the world was silent, that our
journey to freedom was a costly one, and we paid a dear price for it.  But
only those that pay a high price for freedom value freedom more than anything
else.  You, us - all of us in this room - were able to transcend the bleak
realities and create a new life whose motto is: "Yes, I am my brother's
keeper."

     During this conference, there were extraordinary experiences.  The
liberator of Auschwitz, General Petrenko of the Soviet delegation, is hugging
people that he liberated.  Gorlinsky from the Soviet Union, who liberated
Terezin, recalled how he hugged and kissed American soldiers on the banks of
the River Elbe.  Hadassah Rosensaft discovers that in the audience is Ray
Kaner, whose life she saved.  Siggi Wilzig discovers that he's sitting next to
one of his guardian angels.

     Yes, we had moments of glory in this conference, but does it reflect
reality outside?  Does it reflect really what's happening?  The majority of
the world is the constant struggle.

     The State of Israel, the haven of so many refugees and survivors of World
War II, is threatened, both by foes and friend.  "Zionism is racism."

     Our own American liberators are here with us and together with us are
trying to cope with our memories and with the price of the freedom that they
offered us.

     Yet, our existence is denied.  "There were never camps.  There was never
a Holocaust.  There were never liberators.  There were never any of us." Never
did they hear any of the stories that they just heard here.

     Yes, the gates of the concentration camps, the gates to hell, were opened
and hopefully closed.  We are all free men.  Let us have faith that the hearts
and minds of men will be open to the suffering of people, to the understanding
that the price that we paid for liberty was not in vain.

     Let me conclude, as befitting a conference of liberators, with a
quotation from an American liberator, the host country of this conference, and
the state and the country that welcomed all of us around the table and offered
us a home after the Holocaust.  It is from Lieutenant General James M.  Gavin,
a liberator of Woebbelin: "It had been a long and costly journey, and we
overran the concentration camp and looked back with a better understanding of
what we had seen.  We knew it had been a journey worth every step of the way.
Let's preserve inch by inch the way to freedom."